At this moment, Santos’s head is filled with images. In the telling of his story, he has broken down, covered his face with his hands, been silent for a while. Now he is ready to start talking again. Gracias a Dios que nos ha salvado – “Thank God he saved us,” he says, referring to his father, who carried him and his little brother into the highlands of Guatemala, one night in the early 1980s. His father had been playing soccer that day, his favorite pastime, while his mother sold tamales on the sidelines. It was a Sunday afternoon, and people were playing, eating, having fun. Inside his father’s athletic bag, someone had placed a note: if he didn’t cooperate with the military, he and his family would be killed that night. Santos was 5 years old; his little brother was a baby.
This was during la violencia – the Civil War –in Guatemala, during which the government-run military led a campaign of extermination of the Mayan people. Santos’s father was a governor of their town, and had refused to cooperate either with the military or with the guerrillas. So, the family was forced to leave. Santos remembers seeing horrible things during that time, remembering them through the eyes of a 5-year-old: “The images come,” he says – of a bus set on fire, the people screaming inside, the children crying because of the heat.
Years later, in 2000, he came to New Bedford because an uncle had moved here, had promised he would be able to find work, and safety. Yet Santos says there are only three places in this city where he feels safe: at home, at work, and at church. When he is shopping, or riding his bicycle, or walking in his neighborhood, no matter what time of day, he feels vulnerable.
On the day he was hit he had just cashed his paycheck. In his pocket were $400, plus another $200 that he had withdrawn from the bank, to pay his bills. He had been to a money-transfer service to send $100 to his father, still in Guatemala, and bought some snacks for the house – churros y golosinas. He had about $600 left, when a baseball bat hit the back of his head, and his forehead, above his eye. Through the blood streaming into his eyes, he could then see that there was a gun pressed to his forehead. He tried to swat the gun away, but then he lost consciousness. He woke up afraid, and felt someone touching his face. He recoiled with fear, but realized it was someone there to help him, the police, and a medic with an ambulance. This happened on a Saturday. On Sunday he was released from the hospital. On Monday, he went back to work.
Santos lives in a third-floor apartment with his wife, Rosa, who is from El Salvador, and their seven-year-old son, Michael. The last time he had had trouble like this was in 2007, when Rosa was just three weeks away from giving birth to Michael. They were both working at the Bianco leather factory, in New Bedford, when federal immigration agents swept through the place, arresting mostly Guatemalan immigrants. Rosa was held and Santos was sent, for 25 days, to a detention center in Texas. They are not sure why they were finally allowed to stay – maybe because of Rosa’s condition, expecting the baby. But they are here now.
They spend this Sunday morning resting, at home. Rosa prepares a big pot of soup, chopping vegetables, making tortillas. They walk to church, hear the sermon, and walk back home. At 3:00, Rosa will have to go to work, but for now they’re together. In the next room, Michael plays with a puzzle, while Santos dozes in a chair. Around their home, Rosa has placed las imágenes – images of the saints, to whom she prays, with gratitude, every morning. “They have blessed us because we have our health to work, and dinero para el pan de cada dia – money for our daily bread,“ she says. “We are blessed.”