Oral History

Oral History Report
I interviewed my mother Carmen Torres. She moved to the United States from Mexico in 1973. She had no education growing up and few jobs in Mexico. Today she is now 56 years old with a successful business in Chicago, Illinois, a house in the Northern Suburbs, and a wonderful family.

What was it like growing up in Mexico?
Well, it was very hard; we were a poor family living in a small village with no work, little food, and a big family. Our family had no running water, no electricity, no gas, and any heat or AC. I remember by the age of seven I was already helping my parents milk the two cows we had, fetch water for the dishes and animals about 6 miles away from our house, clean the house, clean the animal coral and I would do the same thing over at my grandmother’s house daily.

When did you first decide to come to the U.S?
When I was 18 and met your father. He was living in the same situation my family and I were living in. He was very poor, working 80 hour work weeks as a driver by the age of 20. When we met it wasn’t long after his sister Maria came to the United States and told us that there were a lot of factory jobs in Chicago, a lot of housing and if we wanted to move in with her. Your father and I decided that we should move to the United States to start our own family, become economically stable and bring our family from Mexico. In the winter of 1973 we moved to the U.S. and began our journey.

Which lifestyle did you prefer?
When we first arrived we wanted to go back immediately, we thought Chicago was cold and it was snowing all year round. We finally got situated with your Aunt Maria, and as she told us, factory owners would pull people off streets to offer them jobs. After a while we were still very poor but better off than we were in Mexico. We had our first child, your sister Mary, and things were pleasant. By 1983 we bought our first apartment building and things turned for the worst. It was an older building but with a lot of hard work we fixed it up and almost looked new. In 1985 our building burned down, we had invested our savings to bring our family from Mexico. Again we had to find better jobs, rebuild our building, and get back on track. In 1988 we sold the building and bought our first restaurant. From there we started to love the life we were living, we bought our first car, a house In Lincolnwood, and our business kept growing.


Are there any things you miss from Mexico?
Unfortunately yes, I was never able to bring my mother to the United States to live with us because of her illegal status. My father was only granted a visa for two weeks and he was never granted another. Also there is a sort of peace you get from a little village, in Chicago there is always crime and a feeling of insecurity in some places you go but not in Mexico since everyone knew everyone.