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| ESL-English Place |
BILINGUAL INTERVIEWS |
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Special |
This interview has to be given in paraphrase form, because Mr. Esquivel's personal experience was so extensive, dramatic, so filled with emotion and sacrifice, danger and horror, that to relate it in detail would overpower the message of language mastery that we want to emphasize here -- the true story which Emigio wants told. |
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Introduction |
| Mr. Emigio Esquivel will have us know first of all that he is proud to be called "Mister" Esquivel as opposed to "Seρor" Esquivel. And, the reason for that is, 17 years after he first entered the United States as an immigrant from Mexico, he is now a United States citizen. This is a fitting reward for someone who alone earned every single advantage he now has -- all was done by his own hand, against odds and obstacles that would have defeated most all the rest of us. His experience in "making" it to the United States and staying in the United States is so awesome that a movie would be required to make it believable. This whole story is just too much to attempt to cover in this kind of an article -- but so that our readers won't feel "cheated" until they perhaps might meet and talk with Mr. Esquivel himself someday, we'll give you an idea here of what happened to Emigio on his adventure northward. He wants this part of the story to be short so he can emphasize that what he has done anyone else could do, provided they really wanted to do it. | ||||
| The lure of "el norte" -- the North, or the USA |
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Emigio Esquivel came from perhaps as poor a background as anyone could imagine. He was born into one of the peasant settlements on the western outskirts of Mexico City. His parents struggled to provide him with shoes and pencils sufficient for part-time attendance to a very poor public school system through the third grade. After that he worked at any little thing he could do to support himself and help his family. This pattern continued until he was 17, when a friend advised him secretly that he was going to take the big chance and go to "el norte" to work. The allure of many jobs and the marvels of the United States was an even greater attraction to Mexican young people then than it is today. Emigio decided that it was the only thing left for him to do also, and he and group of friends headed north. The story of the rest of the trip north is told only in the barest details here, and only to help the reader appreciate the stupendous accomplishments demonstrated by Emigio 17 years later. |
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| The river and all the rest... |
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Emigio's group made it to the Mexican border, to San Luis Rio Colorado, south of Yuma, Arizona -- the Colorado river (not the Rio Grande) is wide there, and totally dangerous -- several attempts to cross were made, but the group was caught and returned to Mexico 6 out of their 7 tries -- there were the helicopters and the dogs and the patrols -- the seventh try got them to the middle of the river, then the helicopters frightened all but Emigio back again -- he almost didn't survive the swirling waters to the other side, arrived virtually drowned in the dark to searchlights beaming down from the distance -- he frantically hid in a trash bin for several hours, a shelter which he discovered was also the home of a rattlesnake -- he fled at the earliest safe moment so frightened he could hardly walk -- it's now midnight with only his under shorts to his name -- then, he scavenged rags to tie around his feet for shoes and headed north by the stars across the Organ Pipe desert -- without water or protection in the month of July -- he was found near death and taken to someone he knew in Casa Grande -- he survived and revived in about a month, and began work in the fields -- and, after a short while ended up in the Maricopa agricultural work force. |
| Life then seemed good for a while... |
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The trauma of the trip was an equalizer for Emigio for some time. He was temporarily satisfied to work and eat and sleep and occasionally contact the family back home. But, in about two years his confidence and ambition returned and his original goals to be someone and something pushed him forward again. He found a job in a restaurant busing tables. This was his big break, he felt, because he could now talk with people who spoke English. He felt he could now do more than just work in the fields for the barest of minimum wages. But it was so hard for him. He not only could not speak, read or write English, but he now realized he had almost the same problem in Spanish -- he didn't have any education to help him along. He gradually became more and more discouraged. Here was all this opportunity, and he just couldn't seem to get a grip on it. It was all so hard. His spirit declined and the allure of the "bottle" did him in for a while. He found himself awash in depression and alcohol on and off for another year or two. All this time he was searching for his answer within himself, knowing he could make it, yearning to find out how. |
| He found the secret and solution to language learning... |
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Soon it was back to any kind of a job he could find
where he could talk to people who spoke English. This kind of
environment kept coming to his mind as the answer to achieving his
goals. He just kept trying and trying and trying to learn a little
more language, just like he desperately took one more stroke then another
then another then another toward the other side of that Colorado River
several years before. He gradually became his own teacher --
because, as he said, "...even if I had books in Spanish or English,
it wouldn't matter, because I couldn't use a book in either language at
that time". Very soon he was surprised to learn that he
had invented a study plan. And this plan actually began to work for
him, and he could see he was now remembering words and phrases and
"starting to put it all together". His "plan"
was this: One day it occurred to him that he knew there were 360 or
so days in the year. It then seemed logical to him that he could
learn at least one word each day every day of the year, and remember it --
"...really, now, one word a day? I would have to be really
stupid if I couldn't do that, I thought to myself", he laughed.
"But the pronunciation! Spanish-speakers almost all think
English to be the language of the devil, that is, English is something
attractive but can't be learned or understood," he continued. "I
just somehow knew inside of me that if I said that one word enough times
every day, I would be able to remember it. So I would ask someone
each day to teach me a new word -- and, of course, sometimes it would be a
whole sentence, like a description of something and so on. Then I
would go over it again and again in my mind until I had a chance to go
home or be by myself where I could say it out loud over and over
again. And whenever I had a chance, in fact, every time I could get
the chance to do it, I would go to my room or out in a field somewhere and
just shout that word out loud again and again and again until it was easy
for me to both say and remember. And I just kept on with this
without stop for probably three or four years. I would also try to
write a little bit, too, and also to read the newspaper. But my
practice was mainly to shout out loud all these words I was learning every
day. I don't know how many times I would repeat that word over and
over again. It got to be fun, a kind of a game, and I felt for the
first time in my life I was really winning my battle to get ahead.
This is how I did it, and to this day I still do the same thing. I
have trained all my business associates to correct me every time I say
something incorrectly -- they used to be embarrassed to tell me, but now
they all jump right up and help me because they know I want them to help
me become perfect in English someday!" |
| He wanted to be perfect in English, he says... |
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Emigio Esquivel may be from Mexico, but most of his customers who are English-speaking would never suspect that he didn't grow up right in Arizona where he works and lives now. Anyone, even with a trained ear, has to listen very closely to Emigio to find any sort of accent or any use of the English language that is not pure "gringo". If Emigio did not look a little Mexican, most people would never suspect he was from Mexico -- that's how good his spoken English is, many years after the Colorado River terror. |
| Suffering and practice made him professional |
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Emigio is truly a "true Bilingual" -- we define "true bilinguals" as persons who have mastered a second language and make their living using their second language. Emigio not only uses his second language to make a living, but has used it to compete in two of the most difficult of all areas of language usages. First, he became a professional commissioned car salesman for a major car dealer in Arizona, and rose to the level of an award winning salesman, usually one of the top salesmen at his dealership. Then later he developed his own business as an entreprenuer, with employees, with more years of continued success, all resulting from using his second language of English in an expert way. Only determination and persistence like Emigio's could ever make such a thing possible. Few people know this story about Emigio. It is truly a story from rags to riches, from rags for shoes, to respect and success through learning to use the most difficult language on earth -- English -- as his first language for business and success.. It is also a super dramatic example that demonstrates to everyone once again that motivation is the best key to success. |
| How he did it is clear to him -- BRAVO ! |
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Can we
have a round of applause here? !! |
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-- EMIGIO ESQUIVEL |
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