Millions of Americans point to Ellis Island as the place where their family was first introduced to the United States. Others trace their ancestry to ships that dropped anchor centuries ago in New England. Still more greeted Lady Liberty by way of airplanes and a visa.
My father? He fondly remembers the comfortable space in the trunk of a Chevy Bel Air that was his ticket to the American dream.In 1968, Dad left his dying village of Jomulquillo, in the Mexican state of Zacatecas, to join his three older brothers in East Los Angeles.
Eighteen years old, impetuous and with a fourth-grade education, Lorenzo Arellano would have had to do months’ worth of paperwork to enter the United States legally – and there was still no guarantee that he’d be allowed to enter. Youth and a growling stomach have little patience, so my father paid a white woman – a U.S. citizen – to sneak him into the United States. In Tijuana, he squeezed into the Chevy’s trunk alongside a cousin and another man and prayed.
The Bel Air passed across the U.S.-Mexico border with no problem – the agents just waved it through. It sped north on Interstate 5 for an hour until it came to the Border Patrol checkpoint just south of San Clemente. The car slowed to a crawl, then stopped. A moment of tension. The migra gave the Chevy the OK to leave.
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