Been through Hell

It wasn't until considerably later in life that Roxana Melendez—born in Santa Fe and of Salvadoran-Guatemalan descent—realized that the hardship that her parents suffered through to get here weighed heavily on her.

Her mother, Aida, and father, Paul, both in their mid-40s, now hold down steady jobs in Santa Fe's hotel industry. They left their home nations of Guatemala and El Salvador in the late 1980s, eventually meeting among the adobe here and starting a family together.

But there was just one thing eating at the mother on a major level: She'd left her 1-year-old daughter in order to make the trek north for a better life. The father at the time had long been out of the been picture, so Aida left her daughter with her older sister.

The separation was difficult, and it soon became a part of Roxana's narrative in life: Somewhere in Guatemala, in the hard-to-pronounce town of Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa, she had an older sister who'd she never met; her name is Maria Fernanda, just a few year older than she.

"I felt like I lived these two separate lives in three different countries," says Roxana, who dropped out of Santa Fe's public school system to have a baby girl of her own, later earning her GED. "I lived here in Santa Fe, I had family over there, I had a sister over there, I had cousins over there from both sides. My parents would talk about it all the time.

"It was confusing."

It wasn't until she began training to be a volunteer at Gerard's House, a nonprofit that counsels children with grief, that she soon discovered that her feelings were actually normal, and that she shouldn't be too hard on herself.

If anything, as a child of immigrants—foreign-born immigrants make up 13 percent of Santa Fe's population—she found pride.

Now 21, Roxana Melendez, the epitome of someone who is truly bilingual, should be equally proud that come October she'll be one of coordinators of a new program that will help hundreds of grief-stricken children in a trio of public schools in Santa Fe.

Called Nuestra Jornada, or Our Journey, the program is an offshoot of Gerard's House and is funded by the National Christus Fund, associated with CHRISTUS St. Vincent Regional  Medical Center and A Little Hope Foundation, based in New York.

In all, $31,000 will be spent on the program, which extends through the school year and will focus primarily on children whose families have come from Central America and Mexico and who've witnessed atrocities on their journey to the US, according to Katrina Koehler, the executive director of Gerard's House.

Koehler says a crew of bilingual counselors, along with an army of volunteers, will start talking to troubled children at Cesar Chavez Elementary School and Ortiz and De Vargas middle schools in both one-on-one settings and small groups.

They will encourage them to open up while also letting them in on a little secret: that some of their behavior—quick tempers and short attention spans, their bouts of depression—is considered "normal," given what they've seen and experienced.

"It takes time to adjust, especially when you take into consideration what some of these children have been through," Koehler tells SFR last week after giving a quick tour of the organization's office, pointing out the artwork that reflects the ups-and-downs that some of the children have felt in the past.

An estimated 500 English language learners attend the three schools; many of them were foreign born and are considered economic and political refugees. Quite a few came here unaccompanied by their parents, from countries like Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and El Salvador.

While nearly all are struggling with their English, many of them have behavioral issues, a direct result, counselors believe, from trying to cope with the emotional hardship endured in their home countries and on the perilous road to the United States.

Some had to stow away in freight trains and cross miles upon miles of Arizona desert to get to the City Different, Koehler says. The fact is, they represent just a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands who've migrated here these past two years and became a flashpoint for President Barack Obama's method of handling immigration.

So great are their numbers that shelters better described as jails were built in Texas to house them while federal officials decided what to do with them. The situation, of course, is still ongoing, but the gist is that the minors, because they came unaccompanied, receive greater protections and cannot be deported under federal law.

All of which had angered those people who say that the US-Mexico border should be a tight, well-oiled and secure territory, not a place where children can cross, willy-nilly.

At that time, critics were saying that the exodus was prompted by Obama's executive decision to delay the deportation of US-born children here, but pro-immigrant groups counter that migration trek was merely coincidental and was the result of problems in the Central American countries, which happened to peak at the time.

Roxana tells about how her father, just six months ago, flew back to San Salvador to be with his dying mother. After landing in the capital city, Paul intended to head straight for Cojutepeque, where much of his family was still living.

But his uncle stopped him in his tracks at the airport.

"He was unable to wear his shoes and a lot of his clothing because of the colors," says Roxana. "They would have put him in danger with the gangs. His family over there was constantly living in fear."

The uncle had come equipped with a new wardrobe for Paul.

As her father told Roxana upon his return, the children were not allowed outside and came straight home from school. Every day during his three-week stay, Paul heard about someone dying as the result of gang-related fights and other violence.

The father thinks he may never return again. His mother passed away while he was there. There's nothing worth returning for, as he sees it. Things are just too out of hand.

As hard as it is to work in Santa Fe, life is relatively easy here compared with the constant violence he heard about in the neighborhood as the bad news trickled down through family and friends after it had happened, Roxana says.

And now some of Santa Fe's children who can relate firsthand to Paul's brief experience—but were exposed to it much longer and over a greater period of time—will receive help from Roxana and Koehler.

Their lives in and of themselves serve as a great contrast, but their paths are now converging in this common goal.

After graduating from Yale with a degree in classic Greek history, Koehler lived on Long Island and worked as an air traffic controller. Two decades ago, she moved to Santa Fe, and she's been working at Gerard's House for much of that time, moving up the ranks to executive director.

"We're so lucky that we get to feel satisfied after a day's work," says Koehler. "We're helping kids and teenagers who have been misunderstood or overlooked."

She started at Gerard's House almost 15 years ago, and she hasn't looked back since. She says she loves that Roxana is now by her side.

"This is going to be great program," Koehler adds.

Santa Fe Reporter