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Rosa and Luis Vasquez spend 10 hours a day, six or seven days a week, cleaning apartments and laying carpet to support their three school-age sons. When they return, exhausted, to the cramped two-bedroom apartment in Wheaton they share with another family of four, they always ask their boys about their day.
But their chats take place on a Web camera that links the couple to their sons, who are in El Salvador. Thousands of miles separate their labor and their love.
The couple's decision to migrate and leave their family behind has been repeated by millions of Salvadorans. It has led many of them to Montgomery and Prince George's counties and parts of Virginia to work bottom-rung jobs in sagging industries: construction, hospitality, commerce. In Montgomery County, there are 31,856 Salvadorans, and in Prince George's, there are 29,726, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2008 American Community Survey.
Many of these immigrants work grueling schedules with one goal: sending money, known as remittances, back home. El Salvador's population and economy depend on remittances — this money accounts for 16 percent of the country's gross domestic product, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.
The remittance system thrived for years, along with the American economy. Now, America's recession has become El Salvador's problem. The $3.788 billion sent in remittance money to El Salvador in 2008 dropped to $3.465 billion in 2009, an 8.5 percent decrease, according to the Inter-American Development Bank, which tracks remittances.
The diminishing returns have dealt a crippling blow to the Salvadoran communities that rely on American dollars to survive. But many immigrants have chosen to wait out the recession despite the shortage of work.
The Vasquezes are among the lucky few with steady jobs, and they never fail to send something to their family. Together, the couple makes $3,000 a month, but after rent and other bills, they are left with less than $1,000, and from that they try to send $760 each month to their boys. The couple said they decided to immigrate without their children because they had no other choice. If they hadn't left El Salvador, they would have had to take the boys out of school and maybe put them to work, and they would have struggled to afford even basic food and shelter.
‘It all changed'
Luis, 36, left El Salvador in 2000. Rosa, 38, stayed behind for a few years, selling tamales on street corners or sewing clothes in her small house. She slept in the same bed as her children and took them to the market with her. Brandon is now 11, Vladimir is 14 and Max is 17.
"When Luis left, they felt sad. It all changed," she said. "So I did everything with them."
By 2005, the little work she had wasn't enough to supplement Luis' remittances. She followed him.
With their sometimes 60-hour-a-work weeks, Rosa and Luis have no time to visit their siblings and nephews in New Carrollton, Rockville and Virginia. They don't even have much time to see each other. They try to sleep when they aren't working to support the children they only see on a screen.
"When I'm alone sometimes, I cry," Rosa said. "But they start talking about their days [through the Web camera], and I sleep better when I see them."
The boys are now under the care of their cousin, Evelyn Orellena, 30, who watches the house and raises the boys.
Max, the oldest and the man of the house, is mild-mannered and speaks with the maturity of an adult. Vladimir is outspoken. His brow is often covered in sweat, an indication not only of his energy but also of the cheap, plastic roof that keeps the house so hot.
Brandon's face is almost a copy of his mother's; his dimples are apparent even when he doesn't smile. In a letter about his parents, he wrote in Spanish, "Please tell them how much I love them, but tell them it's as if I almost don't miss them ... because they are constantly rooted in my heart, and they are with me every step I take.''
The four live in a small cinder block house in a rough neighborhood on the outskirts of San Salvador. The house was among Luis' first purchases with the money he sent home from America.
Luis once drove a produce truck all across Maryland, a job he loved. But he was laid off about a year ago after the company he worked for was absorbed by a larger one, he said.
Unlike many immigrants, he was able to find full-time work laying carpet and doing handyman work in an apartment complex. But now he makes $12 an hour; he used to make $20 an hour. Rosa used to work five days per week, and now she works seven.
But with the recession and severe lack of work, Luis said he has no other options.
"That's life in this country; it takes its toll," he said.
Rosa said before the pair immigrated, the family was barely getting by. The children have memories of going without food. Now they are materially better off — they have food, they have shelter and they go to school.
"Practically all we earn is for them," Rosa said. "It's the only option for us. There is no other option."
Cutting corners
Evelyn now has to run the household differently, as she is receiving less remittance money for the family. Luis and Rosa pay her a monthly $150 stipend, which she pools with the money sent for the boys. Evelyn buys the cheapest products she can find and cuts corners. If anything is left, and sometimes nothing is, she takes that as payment.
They've cut out luxuries—no more of the boys going out for fried chicken at Pollo Campero, their favorite fast-food restaurant. Instead, Evelyn cooks meals at home, using the same outdoor sink for preparing food that she uses for washing dishes and doing laundry.
Of all their possessions, Rosa and Luis most treasure their laptop, the link to their children, purchased with $500 the couple had painstakingly saved. They wipe the screen often and pick it up with care.
In San Salvador, the desktop computer Brandon, Vladimir and Max use is almost out of place in their small house. A tiny fan blows while it's on to keep it from overheating. The boys can only play computer games on Saturdays, but they use it daily to talk to their parents.
The boys hold up homework and drawings and grades to the small camera. Rosa and Luis notice recent haircuts.
Evelyn asks Rosa and Luis about house rules: Should the boys help clean the house and wash dishes, even though in El Salvador that is deemed women's work? Yes, Rosa and Luis say, because in America, you have to be able to do everything.
It's far from perfect; they can't feel hugs or kisses through the computer, but at least they talk to each other intently, and they see each other's faces every day.
Evelyn takes her job seriously.
"Sometimes my brother complains, asking ‘Why do you stay there? They're not your sons,'" Evelyn said. "I can't leave them. I can't imagine leaving them. I'd always be thinking of what they're doing, what they're eating, if they're sleeping well."
Looking ahead
Evelyn also worries about their futures. Brandon wants to be a doctor; Max, a mechanic. Such jobs are tough to come by in El Salvador, and life could be easier for them in the United States. But she doesn't want them to go. She'd miss them too much.
When asked if she feels like a mother, Evelyn said, "Perhaps. I don't know if mothers feel this way. But I do."
When the boys come home from school, Evelyn doesn't have to tell them to do their homework. They are not attracted to the gang life rampant in their neighborhood, and they don't rebel against Evelyn's strict rules. And Evelyn can relate to them because there aren't many years between them, as there are for so many Salvadoran children left under the care of grandparents.
The immigration of his parents has enabled Max to go to school. He is studying to become a mechanic and has an unpaid apprenticeship with a mechanic, Oscar Piche.
Piche said parents sometimes beg him to take their teens in to help keep them off the streets and in a place where they can learn a marketable skill.
Piche pays Max whenever he can spare something, but it's not much. Max says it doesn't matter; he's doing it to learn something he can build a life upon.
But Max isn't sure what he will do once he completes school. He's been asking auto shops about work, but wonders if he will eventually follow his parents' path.
"There's no work," he said. "I think it may be better to finish and develop myself into an adult here, and then go over and be with them."
About this special report: Gazette reporter Elahe Izadi traveled to El Salvador in February to examine the impact of the U.S. recession on local immigrants working to send money to their families and communities in El Salvador. This project was produced on a World Affairs Journalism Fellowship directed by the International Center for Journalists and funded by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.
