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Gabriela is a third-year student at UC Berkeley who immigrated to the United States from El Salvador at age 15. After arriving in the United States, she lived with her father and his girlfriend near Los Angeles while learning English and completing high school.
Each year, approximately 25,000 undocumented students graduate from California high schools. Across the country, the total number is 65,000. Gabriela spoke to us between classes at Berkeley.
I was born in San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador. My mother only studied until second grade. My father was able to graduate from high school. My mother’s family was really poor and lived in a rural area. My father’s family was middle class.
Gabriela lived as a child with relatives on her father’s side of the family — including her paternal grandparents, one aunt, two uncles and several cousins. Their house was in a middle-class neighborhood of San Salvador. She stayed in a room with her parents and her brother, who is eight years younger than Gabriela.
At the time, El Salvador was still struggling with the aftereffects of a long civil war. Gang activity and crime were an ongoing problem. Starting in the mid-1990s, immigration from El Salvador to the United States spiked to unprecedented levels as individuals and families sought to flee the violence.
I was usually not allowed to go out and hang out with other children who were of my age in the neighborhood so I’d usually play indoors with my cousins and my brother. We would play board games and watch TV, and I would read sometimes. My family really didn't trust other people. They had started to hear lots of rumors about violence in El Salvador and about gangs. And so they were afraid that something could happen to me.
I would sometimes read the newspapers. And I remember one news story that had a big impact on me. It was about decapitated bodies that were found in a park. That was the first time I realized how badly things were going in the country. There was a real problem with gangs and we were always hearing about disappearances. And the gang problem was the result of all these young men being sent back home after being deported from the United States. They acquired a certain culture in the United States and then they started their own gangs in El Salvador, which proliferated and are still proliferating now.
My grandmother was the owner of a photocopy place about 10 blocks from the house. And I remember one day there were two or three men who broke in, and we were threatened at gunpoint. I ended up running away and my grandmother gave them everything. I think I was around 12 or 13 when that happened.