n increasing numbers, Hispanic immigrants are putting down roots in the Roanoke Valley. They're pouring concrete, opening hair salons and filling classrooms. Some employers, meanwhile, are attributing their success to this new labor pool. In this occasional series, The Roanoke Times explores the local impact of the national debate about immigration.
During a busy Friday night dinner waiter Jesus Malaga serves an armload of food to their Anglo customers. Malaga came to America four years ago from Mexico and, like many Mexican immigrants in Roanoke, first landed a job at El Rodeo.
'Never seen someone so driven'
In two years, the couple saved $23,000 — enough to buy a three-room bungalow on the outskirts of Mexico City. They thought they were returning for good.
Rocio fancied the house up, installing kitchen cabinets as she could afford them and nailing boards over cinder block walls.
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After serving a busy lunch crowd together at their restaurant El Charly and Family, Rocio and her husband Carlos Ortiz steal a kiss while sitting down for a quick lunch of tacos sprinkled with fresh lime juice.
But like many Mexicans who have tasted America, the lure of El Norte began to tug. Rocio took sewing classes and had hopes of opening a small sewing factory, but she couldn’t raise the funds. The chair factory where Carlos worked was constantly laying people off.
“In Mexico, if you are 30, they will fire you to hire somebody younger,” she says. “At 35, you’re considered old.”
In 1994, they had another son, Daniel, and little money for milk, fruit or meat. Carlos pleaded with his wife to quit wasting money on things like kitchen cabinets. “I want big pieces of meat,” he said.
Rocio worried about Roberto, now 12, a ripe age for being targeted by gangs. “They will hurt you if you don’t join their gangs,” explained Carlos’ sister, Isabel Booth, who came to Roanoke for the same reason Rocio and Carlos returned in 1999: to educate her kids.
This time, the family crossed the border together. Daniel, 4 at the time, remembers crawling under barbed-wire fences, his elbows rough from burrowing through the sand.
Back in Roanoke, fake documentation was easily acquired. Friends advised the couple to mail away for Social Security and green cards — for $100 — and restaurant managers jump-started the process of applying for legitimate documentation, finally acquired in 2003.
Rocio found work at a meat packaging plant and, because they had no car, she bummed rides from a co-worker. She bought her first car, a 1987 Mercury, for $1,700.
Gallery Rocio Ortiz moves pallets while talking business on the phone on the factory floor, where she occasionally fills in when orders pick up. Ortiz, who once worked regularly on the floor, rose in the ranks to become plant manager. Now she works part-time and on a consultant basis for the owner of the factory, which employs almost entirely Hispanics.
Determined this time to learn English, she took night classes at Patrick Henry High School. Before long, when the boss wanted to tell the other Hispanic workers something, he relied on Rocio to translate.
“You have never seen someone so driven,” recalls Rocio’s English teacher, Shari Conley-Edwards. Out of the hundreds of foreign students she’s taught over the years, “I can’t think of anyone I’d hold up higher than Rocio. She still comes to my classes every now and then, just to review.”
The public library became her refuge. Rocio bought books at yard sales and, at the suggestion of a librarian, checked the same books out on CD so she could follow along.
The first novel she read all the way through was “Before I Say Good-bye,” a romantic thriller by Mary Higgins Clark. It took nine months.
“They work so hard and so fast, sometimes they run from one work station to the next. It would take 50 Americans to replace them.”
In 2001, word came down that the meat plant was closing, but another factory would be taking its place. The new owner needed employees, and it was his opinion, based on experience, that Hispanics worked the hardest:
Of the 24 Mexicans and Hondurans this man currently employs, he said, “They work so hard and so fast, sometimes they run from one work station to the next. It would take 50 Americans to replace them.”
There was just one problem: The man didn’t speak Spanish.
Not only was Rocio bilingual, but she also worked harder for him than anyone else — 65-hour workweeks were routine during the busy season. When she was promoted to manager, the authority gave her a rush.
Her boss, a father figure right away, encouraged her to set goals. He even let her leave work to take English classes without clocking out.
“He knew right away I had a monster inside me,” Rocio says. “He had the experience, but I had the drive.”
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