Where Dreams Come True

By Janet Murguia, President and Chief Executive, National Council of La Raza

Being a Latina woman today means working hard—and having hope. Take Sylvia Figueroa. It’s seven in the morning and she is on the bus in Silver Spring, Maryland, on her way to her job making sandwiches at a deli an hour from where she lives. She’s especially tired today and hopes she can get a nap in before her next job cleaning offices at a downtown high-rise, which starts at six this evening. And maybe she can see her kids and her husband if he gets home early enough from the construction site where he works.

She’s worried about her son. Last night he had trouble breathing, and Sylvia wonders if his asthma is acting up. That will mean a trip to the doctor, and money’s tight this month: neither she nor her husband gets health insurance at work. She also thinks about her cousin who lives with them in the basement of the house her family has rented for the past three years. He just got laid off and, and unlike her and her husband, he has no papers. With all the news on TV lately about raids and roundups, she knows he may not be able to get another job—or worse, he would have to go back to the contractor who stiffed him out of three months’ pay the last time.

And without her cousin chipping in, they may not be able to afford the house outside the city she wants to buy. A lot of her neighbors are in trouble and have had their houses repossessed, but Sylvia saw an ad in the paper about a program to help first-time homebuyers at a nonprofit agency near her house. The counselors helped her and her husband figure how much they could afford and even helped them with all the paperwork.

The house she wants to buy is in a safer neighborhood, and it’s almost brand new, which will help her son with his asthma. Best of all, the house is near a school that’s one of the best in the county. Teachers have told her how gifted her daughter is, and she wants to give her the chance to get a better education and maybe go on to college some day.

As Sylvia gets off the bus and walks the last five blocks to work, she looks at the front pages of the newspapers in their boxes. There, she sees a familiar face. Sonia Sotomayor has just become the first Latina ever to serve on the Supreme Court. Sylvia pauses and realizes she hasn’t heard names like “Sotomayor” too often on the news. She read that Justice Sotomayor grew up poor but in a loving family. She is also very smart. Just like Sylvia’s daughter. And then she realizes that’s why she came to this country 10 years ago—to give her daughter the opportunities she never had growing up.

Sylvia believes with all her heart that her dreams for her daughter and her son will come true because it is in America where dreams do come true. Just look at Sonia Sotomayor.