South of the Border: The New Immigrants Part III

The hope of work launched a Mexican single mother to a new home fraught with challenges—including hanging on to her culture

She was a 29-year-old single mother of two children in Chihuahua, Mexico, and her salary as a beautician wasn’t enough to support her family. So when a brother in the United States told Eva Shoenecker (then Eva Lopez) that she could make a better living here, the choice was simple—but wrenching. 
 
In 1972, in a story familiar to many Mexican immigrants, Shoenecker reluctantly left her young son and daughter in the care of another brother and headed north to Texas. She initially lived in terror of deportation; although she had a passport, she didn’t have a work permit, and every time she saw a police officer, she felt fear course through her. “I didn’t know any English,” Shoenecker recalls, “and I was praying, praying, praying…whenever I saw a policeman. I was suffering every time I saw a policeman.”

Coming to the United States was initially disappointing. She couldn’t find a job that paid more than $50 a week. “I had [another] brother in Seattle, and he told me ‘You know how to sew, you’ll find a job here.’”
So Shoenecker journeyed even farther north, arriving at King Street Station, only to find no one there to meet her. Long hours passed while she contemplated being stranded in a strange city with no money to send home to her children. But her brother finally arrived, and Shoenecker’s second life as a working American began. 
 
At first, like many immigrants who know little English, she could only find factory work at minimum wage. But she saved her money and made friends. She originally intended only a short stay in this country, planning to return to her children as soon as she could save up a nest egg. But instead, she fell in love and ended up marrying, taking her husband’s decidedly non-Mexican surname. When he said he would adopt her two children, then 5 and 11, they joined her, and the family settled on Queen Anne. It was a difficult time for Shoenecker, who had hoped to raise her children among family in her own culture. “Our culture is better in some ways,” she says carefully. “I didn’t like the way kids were raised here. But my kids would have a better future here.”
 
Her son Armando, now 49, remembers with clarity the day he arrived. “At first I couldn’t believe we were coming to the United States. We arrived at 10:30 in the evening. We went to bed at about midnight. At 6 a.m., my mom woke us and said it was time for school.”
 
He attended McClure Junior High, not speaking any English in an era before English as a Second Language classes were offered. “It took me about three months to understand what they were saying to me, six months to really communicate. My sister and I didn’t have a choice but to learn it the hard way.”
Neither did their mother. Shoenecker was determined to resume her career as a beautician. So she began studying English, as well as for her GED and citizenship test.