42 years old, Mexico
I am 22 years old and the mother of one six year old little girl and she lives with my mother in Mexico. I was born in a small town in Guerrero, Mexico. My father was a field worker, and he also collected salt to sell. My mother was a laundress; she took in laundry and ironing to do at home. Later, she sold vegetables at the market. My family did not own any land we rented. My father always had to borrow money so that he could put in a planting. There were eight children in the family, five boys and three girls. I was one of the middle children. My older brothers worked in the fields like my father and helped him collect salt. The older girls helped my mother. We were very poor. We lived in a house made of wood with a cardboard roof and a dirt floor. There was no kitchen, no stove or refrigerator. My mother hauled water from a well, after bringing it up in a bucket hand over hand. We bathed in the river. My father went hunting for rabbits, iguana, armadillo, and pigeons, whatever he could kill. Sometimes that is all we had to eat. When there was money we also had tortillas with salt. Later, my father was given an orchard to manage and was able to farm. Then we ate better but we were still always hungry. I went to school, but I only finished the elementary grades. When I was in school I studied and helped my mother.
When I was fourteen years old I was married by force. I was going home on my bicycle and he grabbed me and took me away by force. He told me that if I didn't marry him people would talk about me because I was no longer a virgin. I didn't want to get married, but I was afraid and ashamed, so I married him. When I was married to him, he was abusive to me, humiliating me in front of other people. I ran away to my parents but each time they said that I was married and so my place was now with my husband. I got pregnant and my husband's cousin said that if he caught me out alone he would rape me. My husband said to him, "Do it". His cousin said, "But she is pregnant; what if she loses the child?" My husband said, "Good, it will cut back on expenses." I confronted my husband when I heard this. He said that it was true and he wasn't sorry. At that point my parents supported me in leaving him.
After my daughter was born I started to work cleaning houses. Then I worked in a tortilla factory and four nights a week I had a second job working at a taco stand. But still my family did not have enough to eat. My two younger sisters and my younger brother were in school. My daughter was getting sick and my mother was also ill. That was when the recruiter approached me. It was a neighbor woman. She said that if I went to Los Angeles I would have more money and I could help my parents. She told me I was going to work inside of a house where men come to pick up women. She told me that it would only be for three months and that they would pay for everything. They would pay for the airfare and I would arrive just fine. At first I didn't like the idea. But she said think it over. She said that I could help my parents out better that way. A couple of days later she came to look for me again. I said that I didn't think I wanted to go. I'd never done that sort of thing and it would be hard for me, and my parents would never put up with that.
The recruiter promised that I could send two or three times as much money home to my family. She promised me $15.00 per client, and said that I could keep the tips as well. Because of my poverty and because sometimes we didn't even have enough money to buy food, and because my daughter was sick, I decided to come up. The recruiter said that I couldn't back out; she said that I would have to pay for the ticket. I couldn't earn enough money to pay her back; I could hardly make enough money to buy food for my daughter. She said that I had to leave right away. I left without my parent's consent. Before I left I looked for my mother at the market and I couldn't find her. Sometimes she took vegetables and walked around to sell in the street or to people in their houses. Only my daughter and my youngest sister were home. I said goodbye.
Two other girls came up with me. The three of us traveled alone all the way to Nogales; then once we got there we met up with two men who were going to cross us over to this side of the border. We ran across. It was very hard for me to cross over that way. Even though we didn't run for a real long time, for about an hour, it was very unpleasant. I felt very desperate and upset. A woman was there across the border waiting for us. She took us to Phoenix, Arizona, to the coyote's house. We slept there that night. The next morning the coyote brought us to Los Angeles. He was the same guy who brought us across the border. I don't exactly know where he took us. I only know that it was some place in Pomona.
It was a house. Everything was covered, including the windows. They wouldn't let us look outside. They did not allow us to go outside at all. When the three of us arrived there, four other people were in the house. One of them was the woman in charge. She was the sister of the woman recruiter who hired us in Mexico. The three other women were like us. It was very unpleasant; they wouldn't let us make any noise whatsoever; we weren't even allowed to look out the window. They threatened us. We were under constant threats that if we stepped outside the police would pick us up; they would beat us up and throw us in jail. They said that if the police were ever to come and pick us up that we under no account could tell anybody about the man who was there. He was an Asian man. He was the person who would receive all of the money that we would get from our work. He told us that we would be paid at the end of three months, but we were never paid for our work. The clients paid $60 for us, and we were promised $15, but we were never paid.
The boss would get very angry and yell at us loudly. When one of us said that we wanted to talk with our families in Mexico he said that we were too much trouble. He said that we were causing a lot of problems for him. He wouldn't let us make any phone calls to our families until we had been there two weeks. When I was able to call my family they already knew where I was and what I was doing. Right after I left the recruiter started to tell everybody in town what I had come up here to do. My mother found out. She said that she didn't like what I was doing. I told her that it was more than anything to help them. There was really nothing she could do about it because I was up here and she was down there. Every couple of weeks I would send my family some money. These were tips that the clients would give us, sometimes $10, $15, or $20.